Beethoven's 32 Sonatas with 64 pianists: Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier")

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Link to Jed's Gramophone Collection article: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical%20music%20news/article/introducing-gramophone-s-january-2020-issue

Link to Between the Keys webcast featuring Peter Serkin's recording - https://www.wwfm.org/webcasts/2018-01-09/between-the-keys-january-9th-beethovens-last-sonatas-part-2

Link to Frederic Rzewski's live 1991 recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyX5W9a_IE

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano

(00:13):
recordings.
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(00:36):
and to help to keep this podcast in production.
We've been exploring all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in this mini series for which I recommend
two different recordings of each sonata.
One is a recording that one can consider historic.
This means from the 78 RPM shellac era or the mono LP era or an archival recording that's

(01:01):
been commercially issued or else been made readily available online.
And the other recording that I recommend is a modern recording meaning from the stereo
or digital eras and is a commercial release.
The object has been not to repeat a pianist throughout this survey so that means we will

(01:22):
wind up with two pianists for each sonata totaling 32 sonatas and 64 pianists.
Beethoven fixed the inscription Führ das Hammerkleber to his last five piano sonatas
referring to the Broadwood company's new and improved model of a piano.

(01:45):
This British company Broadwood had sent their newest model piano to Beethoven as a gift.
As it happened though, the Hammerkleber inscription became most closely linked to the sonata number
29 in B flat major, opus 106.
Certainly this nickname has a formidable ring to it, Hammerkleber, and it reflects the unprecedented

(02:11):
dimensions and challenges presented in this piece which is the largest and arguably most
difficult of Beethoven's 32 sonatas.
Beethoven worked on the Hammerkleber between 1817 and 1818 at the cusp of a personally
difficult and creatively fallow period.

(02:35):
On the very first measure, one senses a liberation of Beethoven's pent-up energy as the ideas
just leap off of the pages, bursting at the seams and testing the limits of two mortal
hands.
I would bet anything that the sonata's first printed editions must have scared off consumers

(02:58):
accustomed to Beethoven's earlier and relatively playable sonatas.
An article in the French music journal called Le Pianiste simply dismissed the sonata as
impenetrable.
However, in the following year, 1836, Hector Berlioz praised Franz Liszt for giving what

(03:22):
he called the ideal performance of a work with a reputation of being unperformable.
It is performable, of course, but it still daunts pianists in regard to its keyboard
layout, its unprecedented time scale, and its seemingly paradoxical fusion of improvisational

(03:45):
momentum and structural rigor.
There are several textual controversies that continue to raise questions to this day.
First of all, there's the question of Beethoven's rather optimistic metronome markings, which
strike many pianists as being impossibly fast.

(04:06):
In a well-known video talk, Alfred Brendel starts playing the opening allegro to the
accompaniment of a metronome, ticking away at Beethoven's prescribed half-note equals
138.
After a few measures, Brendel stops and he disparages that tempo as being akin to silent

(04:27):
movie music.
However, there have been pianists who have been able to match or approximate Beethoven's
headlong directives, and they manage to convey a terse and forward-moving, combative, and
quintessentially Beethovenian sound world that thrills and exhilarates.

(04:50):
But there also are interpreters who favor broader tempos that can potentially impart
an expansive gravitas, I guess, and a sense of majesty that I think befits the music's
intricate details and grand design.
And then other pianists can achieve convincing results by splitting the difference between

(05:13):
these two poles, the majestic and the combative.
There's also a controversy about one note in the first movement, and I talk about this
in my 2019 Gramophone Collection survey of the Hammerklavier Sonata on Disc, for which
I've posted a link in my episode description.

(05:37):
And I will send PDF copies to paid subscribers, by the way.
I've also posted a link to the webcast for my 2018 episode of Between the Keys, where
I discuss the Hammerklavier Sonata in great detail, and I also present the recording of

(05:58):
this work that I will recommend as a stereo digital modern version, which we will get
to very soon.
But for my historic archival recording, I have a very unorthodox recommendation because
it's really a unique document.
It's a recording of the late composer and pianist, Frederick Ziewski, who was a great

(06:21):
friend and mentor to me.
And this is a recording from a concert in 1991 in Holland, where he performed the Hammerklavier
Sonata, but with added improvisation in each movement.
Frederick was known for improvising in Beethoven, and there are several recordings of him that

(06:43):
exist where he plays the Appassionata Sonata, where he's interpolating improvisation.
And many years ago, Frederick and I shared a concert where he improvised with the Appassionata,
and I played the 32 variations in C minor, and I added my own improvised cadenza right
before the coda.

(07:03):
I was totally imitating Frederick's example.
Do you know that Frederick and I actually planned to play together Beethoven's Grosse
Fugue in the composer's forehand arrangement, and we were going to add improvisation at
different points?
Unfortunately, Frederick died before we ever got around to this concert, although I'm sure
it would have been quite fun, and maybe it would have been infuriating for some audience

(07:27):
members, but I'm sorry that it never happened.
For my modern recorded Hammerklavier recommendation, I always cite a recording made in the mid-1980s
by Peter Serkin for the Pro Art label as my personal favorite Hammerklavier.

(07:49):
He had recorded the late sonatas for the Pro Art label earlier using a Graforte piano,
but he re-recorded the Hammerklavier on a Steinway, and it's the Steinway recording
that I recommend, even though it has been long out of print.
And that's the reason I'm posting a link to the webcast for the radio show where I played

(08:12):
this recording in its entirety, because this recording should be restored to the catalog.
And the reason I am recommending this recording, even though it's out of print, is because
Peter Serkin takes Beethoven's metronome markings pretty much on faith, and he does so with
the utmost ease, his playing is light and jazzy and whimsically inflected with an underlying

(08:38):
nervous energy that just keeps you off balance.
It's not the granitic, monumental type of Hammerklavier that his father, Rudolf Serkin,
referred, and Peter Serkin just swings like a maniac.
Oh my god.
I really wish that whomever has the rights to the Pro Art catalog will consider reissuing

(09:02):
this recording of Peter Serkin's Hammerklavier.
It remains such a vital and fresh and unusual, yet utterly compelling interpretation.
This is Jed Dissler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
guide to piano recordings.

(09:22):
And I look forward to being with you next time as we approach the last three Beethoven
sonatas.
And what will my recommendations be for recordings?
You'll have to tune in and find out.
I look forward to being with you next time.